Colt Cabana On Raising Money For Puerto Rico, Working w/ Ian Riccaboni, The Young Bucks’ Reaction To WWE’s Cease And Desist Order

Ring Of Honor’s Colt Cabana recently spoke with Scott Fishman for Channel Guide Magazine; you can read a few excerpts below:

Colt Cabana explains how he and Ian Riccaboni came up with the idea to raise money for relief efforts in Puerto Rico:

I’ll be honest. Ian is a motivated young man. Me personally, you get these ideas in your head and sometimes don’t flush them out. He’s so great about getting the idea in the head and moving forward with everything. Ian did a lot of work in putting this together. I agreed to do it in a heartbeat because it’s so easy to take a picture and sign an autograph. It takes no time and if it brings some joy to people and also try to help in some way what is going on in Puerto Rico. It’s a no-brainer. Hopefully, it’s the first of many.

Colt comments on what his relationship with Riccaboni has been like so far:

I did a couple of tryouts with WWE years ago. A lot of people at the time, just casual fans, would kind of bash Josh Mathews like that was the thing to do. When I did those tryouts with him, just in the tryouts alone, to see how talented he was while doing it. I think it takes a person to actually do it to be able to kind of have that thought process on if commentators are good or bad. I don’t know if it’s a skill that is really appreciated, especially the play-by-play guy or lead person. Even if Ian is new to the company or new to a big stage like this, he is very talented. Just doing it alone is just so hard to do. Just being on the headset and calling it is so hard. Then to be as good as he is where he is at now, I think in five years if he is still running with this he will be amazing. For me, it’s a lot of fun to have this partnership. Over the years I’ve had tag team partners like [CM] Punk, Darren Burridge and Grado. In a weird way, this is like a new tag team partnership with me. Watching him personally it’s fun because I see how much work he puts into it. I see how much studying he does and what a perfectionist he is. Maybe a lot of Ring of Honor fans aren’t seeing that preparation, but he is doing it and doing really good.

Cabana comments on the Young Bucks’ reaction to the WWE cease and desist order over the ‘Too Sweet’ gesture:

I use the word sympathy a lot. Wrestling is about good guys and bad guys. For years, WWF used the sympathy of Hulk Hogan and what was happening with the Iraq war with goodies and baddies. Reality era, you’re making good guys and bad guys. The Young Bucks and Bullet Club have such a great audience that when something like that happens, you got to make good guys and bad guys. In that instance, big corporate America coming down on these two good Christian fathers who are trying to feed their kids, they’ve established good guys and bad guys. There is part of the community who see it as good guys and bad guys. Bucks and Bullet Club are the good guys who the community wants to support here. It’s something I’ve done, too. When I was released by WWE, I think a lot of people were upset by that and didn’t understand why I didn’t get a fair shot. I think a lot of the community saw me as a good guy and WWE as the bad guy. We use that as wrestlers and as business men too.